Back in the late 1960s, the trend of “unbundling” software from hardware lead to a significant expansion of the software industry and triggered a clear necessity for the introduction of legal mechanisms for protection of computer programs. A central issue in the debates that followed in the next decades was whether legal protection should be…Continue reading
Category: Articles
Patent protection of computer programs (part 2)
The core purpose of granting patent rights is not only to reward the inventor but above all to create strong incentives for innovation across all sectors of the economy. It is because of such incentives that we are seeing increased investments in new technology and more pronounced trends of commercialization of groundbreaking products and processes.…Continue reading
Patent protection of computer programs (part 1)
Back in the 1960s computer programs did not have the status of standalone products. They were written specifically for a given mainframe computer and were bundled together with the hardware as an offering to the end customers. Accordingly, computer programs had a secondary role as mere accessories to hardware. This started to change at the…Continue reading
Forms of expression of a computer program protected under copyright
Nowadays, the copyright system is the dominant legal framework for protection of computer programs. However, this was not always the case. Back in the 1970s, there was strong competition between the patent and copyright systems for taking the throne in governing IP protection of software. Copyright was deemed a good fit as computer programs in…Continue reading
Software Licensing: the proprietary model and the open source model
A software license resembles a rental agreement. The vendor retains ownership of the intellectual property rights in the software but grants a third party with a limited right to use it for a certain period of time. However, not all licensing models are created equal. Significant differences exist between the traditional licensing model of proprietary…Continue reading
Wrap agreements in electronic contracting: click-wrap and browse-wrap
Over the course of the past three decades we are experiencing a new reality of flourishing and ever-growing electronic commerce. This new form of trade brought with itself a new medium for contracting – electronic contracts. The result is that nowadays, with one click of a mouse a user in one part of the world…Continue reading
IP and Video Games
Over the course of the last four decades the video games industry has seen rapid growth and expanse. In 2019 the global video games market was valued at 151 billion dollars and the expectation for it is to reach a value of more than 250 billion dollars by 2025. For the last 40 years computer…Continue reading
Public key cryptography and its applications on the blockchain
Cryptography is an essential pillar of modern cyber security. It has a multitude of applications in digital currencies, blockchain technology, payment cards, password protection and electronic commerce. Cryptography can be defined as the science and practice of keeping information secure by way of employing mathematical principles and transforming that information into a form that would…Continue reading
Literal and non-literal copying as forms of copyright infringement in computer programs
One of the most common forms of IP infringement when it comes to computer software is unauthorized copying. Such copying represents a violation of the exclusive reproduction right of the copyright holder. The exclusive reproduction right gives the rightholder the power to authorize or prohibit direct or indirect, temporary or permanent reproduction by any means…Continue reading
The open source definition and permissive FOSS licenses
In general, the concept of open source is built upon three key tenets – i) the open source technology, ii) the open source community that stands behind it and iii) the open source licenses that regulate the use of that technology. These three elements are intertwined together to produce a phenomenon that provides significant benefits…Continue reading